Cloth Media Filters

Shepard Energy Centre, located in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, began operating in March 2015 and is capable of generating over 800 megawatts of electricity for Alberta residents using natural gas. The facility utilizes two combustion turbines featuring combined cycle technology to generate electricity, and also processes waste heat through a steam turbine to produce additional electricity. This electricity generation process makes Shepard approximately 30 percent more efficient than traditional coal-fired plants and reduces overall fuel costs.

Overview of the three 8-disk AquaDisk® filter units located adjacent to Shepard Energy Centre’s cooling towers.

The facility uses up to 7.7 million gallons per day (MGD) of reclaimed wastewater from the City of Calgary’s Bonnybrook Wastewater Treatment Plant. This is the first application of reclaimed water for power production in Alberta. The majority of this water is used for cooling tower water and boiler feedwater.

Enmax and Capital Power chose to install three 8-disk AquaDisk® cloth media filter units to assist in this process. Effluent from the Bonnybrook Wastewater Treatment Plant is pumped through a nine-mile-long pipe to the Shepard Energy Centre. Water then passes through the three AquaDisk cloth media filters before being sent to the cooling tower.

Filtration is key in preventing solids accumulation in the cooling tower. The AquaDisk filters remove total suspended solids (TSS) and reduce turbidity (NTU) to protect the heat exchangers from clogging. This in turn reduces energy consumption and, in severe cases, prevents plant shutdown.

Shepard Energy Centre is now Alberta’s largest gas-fueled electricity generation facility and the first to utilize AquaDisk cloth media filtration as an integral component of its energy production process. IWW

Since 1969, Aqua-Aerobic Systems has been a leader in the design, application and manufacture of wastewater treatment equipment and systems for municipal and industrial markets worldwide. Learn more at aqua-aerobic.com.

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